The Difficulty Of AMI Awards Opening Pure Ethnic Category Constrained By Lack Of Regional Musicians Registered With Work

JAKARTA - The Indonesian Music Award (AMI) Awards continue to strive to oversee the development of Indonesian music, including in reaching out to types of music that have high cultural values.

However, efforts to open a special pure etno category or pure ethnic music at the most prestigious music award event in the country face serious obstacles.

Syaharani as the Democratization Council of the AMI Foundation explained that currently, pure ethnic music works from various regions in Indonesia are still being collected and included in the adjacent general category, such as World Music.

The decision was not without reason. He said that not many pure ethnic works had been registered with the AMI Awards, until finally the opening of the new category was not possible.

"The arrangement at the AMI Awards, to be used as a new category, there must be at least five works under different names, different artists," said Syaharani, met in Senayan, Central Jakarta some time ago.

The woman who is also known as the famous jazz singer explained that the main obstacle found by the categorization team was: although the number of pure ethnic works that came in was quite a lot, some even reached 10 works.

"So, one person produces 10 pure etno songs. It doesn't count. It can't be done," he said.

Syaharani gave an example of a case in the previous year, where there were quite a lot of ethnic works that came in from Bali and Java. However, after looking back, only four different artist names were collected.

"It can't be regulated yet," he added.

Despite being hampered by regulations, Syaharani emphasized that the addition of pure ethnic music categorization is important and urgent. Indonesia, as an archipelagic country, has a wealth of ethnic music from different regions, ranging from gamelan, talempong, to various other distinctive sounds.

"I think this is also an important thing, because in our country we have a lot of etno music. From each region it is different," he said.

Syaharani hopes, with education and encouragement to musicians in the regions, especially producers, to help each other collect works from different artists, so that the pure ethnic music category can officially open at next year's AMI Awards.

However, he underlined the importance of this category only filled with pure ethnic music, namely works that are not mixed with pop music, jazz, or other modern genres. This aims so that ethnic music as an asset of Indonesian culture can truly be maintained and its development is illustrated.